Saturday, July 12, 2014

The Prevalence of Those Grey Flakes Falling?

Per occasionally observed tradition, Saturday's music via Bryce's Friday show, the best three hours of radio each week. These are the musicians but not the pieces Bryce played, except the Radigue - I couldn't find the pieces he played on youtube. This is why I write about rules. A blogfriend has recently returned from a hiatus, I asked him why the hiatus, why the return. I think about a hiatus, think I only think about hiatus because of Kindnesses not reciprocated or content here not being appreciated, but then I smack my self sensible: I mean, it's partially true (and to be honest, this bleg is, within the climate of Blegsylvania vis a vis the ten years of it's existence, doing fine, and thanks), but I've long known that I'm both niche and licorice, I've long figured out the patterns of Blegsylvanian busy and slow. My blogfriend was beaten silent by relentless clusterfuck, how to respond with proper arrgh to the awfulness of the daily duh. It's important to be reminded of the awfulness of the daily duh, aargh consisting of too fucking many reminders of duh. It's not that I think of a hiatus from blogging, I daydream of a clusterfuck-free blog - you, those of you still here, may notice - but I cannot rid myself of the idea of a bogus duty to acknowledge the awfulness of the daily duh not only here but in all iterations of my life. It's how I was trained. And now that I'm being desensitized daily by faster fresh reiterations of duh - there was a shooting somewhere a couple of nights ago, half a dozen killed, dozens wounded, or something, plus routine atrocities since - now that I'm being trained that the daily duh of clusterfuck is in fact routine, move along, and I do, I...

... can vouch for these pieces of music, tomorrow's a High Egoslavian Holy Day, tune in, rest assured, I'll never go longform aargh on you, there are much better than me, let me link to them, have more Ashbery poems.

HOW TO CONTINUE

John Ashbery

Oh there once was a woman

and she kept a shop

selling trinkets to tourists

not far from a dock

who came to see what life could be

far back on the island.

And it was always a party there

always different but very nice

New friends to give you advice

or fall in love with you which is nice

and each grew so perfectly from the other

it was a marvel of poetry

and irony

And in this unsafe quarter

much was scary and dirty

but no one seemed to mind

very much

the parties went on from house to house

There were friends and lovers galore

all around the store

There was moonshine in winter

and starshine in summer

and everybody was happy to have discovered

what they discovered

And then one day the ship sailed away

There were no more dreamers just sleepers

in heavy attitudes on the dock

moving as if they knew how

among the trinkets and the souvenirs

the random shops of modern furniture

and a gale came and said

it is time to take all of you away

from the tops of the trees to the little houses

on little paths so startled

And when it became time to go

they none of them would leave without the other

for they said we are all one here

and if one of us goes the other will not go

and the wind whispered it to the stars

the people all got up to go

and looked back on love

AS ONE PUT DRUNK INTO THE PACKET-BOAT

John Ashbery

I tried each thing, only some were immortal and free.
Elsewhere we are as sitting in a place where sunlight
Filters down, a little at a time,
Waiting for someone to come. Harsh words are spoken,
As the sun yellows the green of the maple tree....

So this was all, but obscurely
I felt the stirrings of new breath in the pages
Which all winter long had smelled like an old catalogue.
New sentences were starting up. But the summer
Was well along, not yet past the mid-point
But full and dark with the promise of that fullness,
That time when one can no longer wander away
And even the least attentive fall silent
To watch the thing that is prepared to happen.

A look of glass stops you
And you walk on shaken: was I the perceived?
Did they notice me, this time, as I am,
Or is it postponed again? The children
Still at their games, clouds that arise with a swift
Impatience in the afternoon sky, then dissipate
As limpid, dense twilight comes.
Only in that tooting of a horn
Down there, for a moment, I thought
The great, formal affair was beginning, orchestrated,
Its colors concentrated in a glance, a ballade
That takes in the whole world, now, but lightly,
Still lightly, but with wide authority and tact.

The prevalence of those gray flakes falling?
They are sun motes. You have slept in the sun
Longer than the sphinx, and are none the wiser for it.
Come in. And I thought a shadow fell across the door
But it was only her come to ask once more
If I was coming in, and not to hurry in case I wasn't.

The night sheen takes over. A moon of cistercian pallor
Has climbed to the center of heaven, installed,
Finally involved with the business of darkness.
And a sigh heaves from all teh small things on earth,
The books, the papers, the old garters and union-suit buttons
Kept in a white cardboard box somewhere, and all the lower
Versions of cities flattened under the equalizing night.
The summer demands and takes away too much,
But night, the reserved, the reticent, gives more than it takes.